Trade Publication Article

Conceived in liberty

Magnet, Myron

2026

Overview

In the Southern colonies, by a shabby quirk of human nature, the prevalence of slavery made freemen especially \"proud and jealous of their freedom\" as a mark of \"rank and privilege.\" Culture is not primarily a matter of reason - of which men have but a limited stock, as Burke stressed - but of belief and feeling, the mental faculties that help us make sense of the world and navigate our daily lives. [...]insofar as each of us is the captain of his soul, if we run aground, that's our lookout, not society' orthe state's. Even after the Union sacrificed 360,000 soldiers' lives to free the slaves, and after the post-Civil War amendments had repaired the flaw in the original Constitution, two bizarre Supreme Court rulings of the 1870s gelded those amendments and licensed a century of segregation and civic exclusion. [...]the marches and rallies of the 1950s and 60s, the agitations of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Freedom Riders, repaired the framers' work-at the cost, however, of emphasizing its signal deformity and stressing the framers' failures over their successes.

• Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
• Subject: American history / Armed forces / Equal rights / Happiness / Individualism / Politics / Public opinion / Religion / Slavery